Amendment (Ani DiFranco)

Yeah, the leaked Supreme Court decision is bullsh*t, an insane power and control move, and they should all be ashamed of themselves.  I have faith that Roe v. Wade (a Constitutional right we've had for 50 years) will not be overturned.  I'm just Pollyanna-ish enough to think that, if 70% of the population believes in the right to choose, it can not, and will not, be taken away from us.  I refuse to imagine a world resembling The Handmaid's Tale.

In the meantime, I'm remembering reading an article decades ago (late-60s/early-70s) about The Jane Collective, and fearing yet feeling we may need to be prepared to resurrect it nationwide, just in case.  We worked too hard, we won't give up, and we won't go back.

Sunday is Mother's Day, and I am incredibly lucky to be able to say that all three of my children were *chosen*, because I had that luxury.  Every woman deserves a choice as to when, or if, they become mothers.

Backstory: I wrote last Friday about attending a livestream for Anna Quindlen's new book (Write for Your Life) a few weeks ago, and Kelly Corrigan was the moderator. I had never heard of KC, and was instantly captivated by her engaging personality, her fluidity of language, and her insightful questions. She mentioned being an author herself which, of course as soon as the virtual event ended, I had to google. I put all of her books on my reserve list at the library and, when I realized Glitter and Glue was about the mother-daughter relationship, I bought a copy for my daughter for the upcoming Mother's Day... and of course I had to read it first... 💞

It is indeed Feel Good Friday and, as is tradition, five items below of beauty, interest, and humor to brighten/enlighten your day/weekend/week.  Enjoy!

~ The 29 Best Last-Minute Mother’s Day Gifts:  Sure, it happens every year on the second Sunday in May. And, sure, every Rite Aid in the country has been teeming with cards, warning you about its impending occurrence. But, hey, we get it: Sometimes Mother’s Day sneaks up and finds us unprepared.

~  Otters:  Just a mom and her pup... 💜

~ Transcending: Words on Women and Strength:  Author Kelly Corrigan penned this moving essay about women's remarkable capacity to support each other, to laugh together, and to endure.

~ Anne Lamott:  Here is the annual Mother’s Day post, ONLY for those of you who dread the holiday, dread having strangers, cashiers & waiters exclaim cheerfully, mindlessly, “Happy Mother’s Day!” when it is a day that, for whatever reasons, makes you feel deeply sad.

~ Calm Mom Balm:  A soothing balm for those who nurture, made with flowers!

SONG:  Amendment by Ani DiFranco

BOOK(S):  Glitter and Glue... and Lift, both by Kelly Corrigan

POEM:  Right to Life by Marge Piercy

A woman is not a pear tree

thrusting her fruit into mindless fecundity

into the world. Even pear trees bear

heavily one year and rest and grow the next.

An orchard gone wild drops few warm rotting

fruit in the grass but the trees stretch

high and wiry gifting the birds forty

feet up among inch long thorns

broken atavistically from the smooth wood.

A woman is not a basket you place

your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood

hen you can slip duck eggs under.

Not the purse holding the coins of

your descendants till you spend them in wars.

Not a bank where your genes collect interest

and interesting mutations in the tainted

rain, anymore than you are.

You plant your corn and harvest

it to eat or sell. You put the lamb

in the pasture to fatten and haul it in

to butcher for chops. You slice

the mountain in two for a road and gouge

the high plains for coal and the waters

run muddy for miles and years.

Fish die but you do not call them yours

unless you wished to eat them.

Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.

You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,

fields for growing babies like iceburg

lettuce. You value children so dearly

that none ever go hungry, none weep

with no one to tend them when mothers

work, none lack fresh fruit,

none chew lead or cough to death and your

orphanages are empty. Every noon the best

restaurants serve poor children steaks.

At this moment at nine o'clock a partera

is performing a table top abortion on an

unwed mother in Texas who can't get Medicaid

any longer. In five days she will die

of tetanus and her little daughter will cry

and be taken away. Next door a husband

and wife are sticking pins in the son

they did not want. They will explain

for hours how wicked he is,

how he wants discipline.

We are all born of woman, in the rose

of the womb we suckled our mother's blood

and every baby born has a right to love

like a seedling to the sun. Every baby born

unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come

due in twenty years with interest, an anger

that must find a target, a pain that will

beget pain. A decade downstream a child

screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,

a firing squad summoned, a button

is pushed and the world burns.

I will choose what enters me, what becomes,

flesh of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,

no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,

not your uranium mine, not your calf

for fattening, not your cow for milking.

You may not use me as your factory.

Priests and legislators do not hold

shares in my womb or my mind.

This is my body. If I give it to you

I want it back. My life

is a non-negotiable demand.

QUOTE(S):  “Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle.” ~ Kelly Corrigan

"Yeah, that means all across the country, women in places like South Dakota or Missouri or even Texas will have the exact same abortion rights as women in Afghanistan under the Taliban." ~ Trevor Noah

Bowl of Oranges (Bright Eyes)

Last Friday, I promised to elaborate on "two perfectly-made-for-me opportunities presented on the proverbial silver platter" at a later date... and that time is now!

~ Okay, I still adore Anne Lamott, and Patricia Lockwood, and Maizy Rae Bukalele... but Cynthia is my new spirit animal!  I was with her for three hours this morning, and she shared her time, energy, and passion with me.  From avocado gleaning (we harvested 2 crates/70 lbs. worth and dropped them off at a local food bank) to fire cider (she gave me her recipe!) to CSAs (starts up in the winter, and I plan to join), and everything in between, I learned so much, and will also begin working in the community garden every Thursday.  As I said:  Mind Blown!

I am excited about life again, re-emerging from my comforting dormancy to challenging growth, with this new connection making me feel that I am exactly where I need to be, finding the balance between doing well and Doing Good.

Cynthia is writing a few books:  the focus of one is Sustainable Ways to Make the Community Better (she is most definitely a conscious bridger, which Dar talks about!), another a cookbook (for some of the less common foods that are able to be grown prolifically in our area), and a few e-books about herbs and their uses for illness/health/women/aging, etc.  She does speaking engagements, teaches classes, sells the fire cider, tinctures, herbs, plants, seeds, etc. from her home.  What an inspiration, and I am beyond excited to contribute my enthusiasm as well as skillsets to The Caring Community!

~ Then, my friend Sandy, knowing of my obsession with language as well as my craving for intentional connection, told me about this project, which spoke to me too.  "We’re willing to bet you’re just like us— eager to make a difference and craving a chance to use your words for good. We hope you know you serve a purpose here and that your words do count. If you’re looking for ways to start shaking up the world today, browse our ways to get involved..."  I just bought the very cool Sun Science stamps and, having no commitments tomorrow (after a very busy last three days), will sit down and write to all five spotlighted recipients (with five new prospects each month).  The World Needs More Love Letters indeed... 💞

My gifts of “time and talent" (I *did* donate "treasure" to various causes/organizations/individuals throughout the pandemic) have gone under the radar during these last 18 months... and it feels like a new day, month, year... 💫

NR:  Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Crosby

SONG:  Bowl of Oranges by Bright Eyes (thanks to my son Rob for the heads-up to this song... 💓)

BOOK:  Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert

POEM(S):  The Seven Of Pentacles by Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup

she is looking at her work growing away there

actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans

as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.

If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,

if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,

if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,

if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,

then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.

You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.

More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.

Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.

Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.

Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.

Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.

Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.

Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,

a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us

interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:

reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.

This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,

for every gardener knows that after the digging, after

the planting,

after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

You See, I Want a Lot by Rainer Maria Rilke

You see, I want a lot.

Perhaps I want everything:

The darkness that comes with every infinite fall

And the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing

And are raised to the rank of prince

By the slippery ease of their light judgments

But what you love to see are faces

That do work and feel thirst.

You love most of all those who need you

as they need a crowbar or a hoe.

You have not grown old,

And it is not too late 

To dive into your increasing depths 

where life calmly gives out its own secret.

QUOTE(S):  "The power of imagination makes us infinite." ~ John Muir

"In times to come, when we are all gone, people not yet born will walk in the sunshine of their own days because of what women and men did at this hour to feed the sick, to heal and to comfort.” ~ John Dwyer

I Love Trash (Oscar the Grouch)

I well recall celebrating the first Earth Day (April 22, 1970) in my sophomore year of high school, when they educated us, along with setting up a recycling center... and I have been an advocate of the environment ever since.  I've been using canvas bags for grocery shopping and reusable containers for leftovers for decades, and my family can attest to my fanaticism about recycling.  About five years ago, I asked them for a composter for Mother's Day, but that never happened and now, with our move to a smaller space, we wouldn't have space for it anyway... :-(

My friend NW has had one for a few years, and I asked her the other day if I could collect compostable material at my house, and donate it to her... and she lovingly said Yes!  I bought a small tabletop bin, in which I've been collecting the obligatory banana peels, eggshells (my husband's), coffee grounds and filters, apple cores, vegetable scraps, etc. and my first delivery is today (hoping to do it weekly).  It's not a lot, but it's something, and it makes me feel better that this stuff will not end up in a landfill, but instead in a "compost stew" that will eventually nourish Nancy's garden.  Win/win!

SONG:  I Love Trash by Oscar the Grouch

BOOK:  Organic Book of Compost, 2nd Revised Edition: Easy and Natural Techniques to Feed Your Garden (IMM Lifestyle Books) Handbook to Sustainable, Low-Cost Methods, Community Composting, & More, with FAQs by Pauline Pears

Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth by Mary McKenna Siddals, Ashley Wolff (Illustrator)

POEM:  The Good, the Bad and the Inconvenient by Marge Piercy

Gardening is often a measured cruelty:
what is to live and what is to be torn
up by its roots and flung on the compost
to rot and give its essence to new soil.

It is not only the weeds I seize.
go down the row of new spinach—
their little bright Vs crowding—
and snatch every other, flinging

their little bodies just as healthy,
just as sound as their neighbors
but judged, by me, superfluous.
We all commit crimes too small

for us to measure, the ant soldiers
we stomp, whose only aim was to
protect, to feed their vast family.
It is I who decide which beetles

are "good" and which are "bad"
as if each is not whole in its kind.
We eat to live and so do they,
the locusts, the grasshoppers,

the flea beetles and aphids and slugs.
By bad I mean inconvenient. Nothing
we do is simple, without consequence
and each act is shadowed with death.

QUOTE:  "A program to make municipal composting of food and yard waste mandatory and then distributing the compost free to area farmers would shrink America's garbage heap, cut the need for irrigation and fossil-fuel fertilizers in agriculture, and improve the nutritional quality of the American diet." ~ Michael Pollan

Old Fat Naked Women for Peace (The Righteous Mothers)

I've been sent this video 3 or 4 times over the last two weeks - is that a peace sign in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?... :-)

I'm loving it! - this song is the lovechild of The Roches' harmonies and Christine Lavin's humor (backstory here)...

SONG: Old Fat Naked Women for Peace by The Righteous Mothers

BOOK: Awearness: Inspiring Stories about How to Make a Difference by Kenneth Cole

The Low Road by Marge Piercy

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can breakyour fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can't walk, can't remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can't stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know you who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

QUOTE: "Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls." ~ Maya Angelou

The Blessings (Dar Williams)

SONG: The Blessings by Dar Williams

BOOK: Blessings: Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life by Julia Cameron

POEM: The Art of Blessing the Day by Marge Piercy

This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your splashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let's not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends'
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can't bless it, get ready to make it new.

QUOTE: "May we be a channel of blessings for all that we meet." ~ Edgar Cayce